1981 Honda CD200 Benly

Rare I would suspect & very very slow

B***ard things, they are the reason I limp.
Despatched on one in the early 80’s in Manchester, flying round Trafford Park and front mudguard came off and jammed under the wheel, needless to say I went over tit landing in front of the bike, I slid gracefully on my side until a handy concrete bollard and my lower back decided to stop me.............
then the 2 wheeled curse word hit me.

One of my all time favourite tracks.

Yes the races were mad.

Some of those guys could ride.

Today..... maybe development rider jobs.

Thanks for the positive comments peeps!

greg350lc I believe that to be a CB250 nighthawk you have there? looks very tidy indeed. I saw something similar come up for sale recently, I watched it just long enough to get told off!

rattlecan rare failry (finding parts is proving to sufficiently annoying) and slow, certainly. By all acounts it will do 70 or so but thats about your lot. Might upgrade the sprocket which apparently helps with gearing for cruising speed.

waynedear all I have got to say to that is f_cking ouch. bad business there... As you may note the front mudguard on this bike is snapped, and patch riveted together. Its gonna be replaced!

South Africa tales sound pretty interesting, nice and lively then! Don't suppose anybody fancies a parts trip for me? lol

chris y they are pretty small, should be interesting as i'm about 6ft 3 or so! these engines I hear are pretty legendary, my intention for this one is not for speed certainly!

by way of an update, she now looks like this:


and one of the shelves in my diddy worksop looks like this:


the strip down has revealed no horrific corrossion, some surface but nothing more. Brakes are all free and working nicely, although it took me some time to work out that if the bike is on her centre stand the rear brake lever doesn't move! Only found this out after coating the whole thing in wd40... anyway no harm done!
carb is on the shelf and will await a trip to be cleaned.

The strip down itself was painless, no seized bolts which was nice. Well when I say painless, that doesn't take into account idiocy... When I got the bike the key provided turned the ignition, but not the tank (key looks very aged, so unclear whats gone on here) so i had to unfortunately. break into the tank. removed the cap until just the barrel was sitting there in the whole, ready for me to put some mole grips on, turn it and remove it. easy. Why oh why did i decide to prod it?? naturally it fell into the tank, resulting in about half an hour of me with molegrips, and the remaining bit of my broken telescopic magnet to retrieve it.

so strip down as far as I oped to go, and a following appraisal of bits and bobs went as so:
rust to trip around lower forks. Not structural but will need replacing
missing indicator relay. weirdly it has three wires going to it, when it ought to have only 2. Apparently German market bikes had 3, no sign of German market here though as far as I know (the numbers all tally)
front sprocket cover missing
chain guard missing
battery long since flat
handlebars are surely bent
RHS switchgear incorrect. Could be a CB200/125 or a USA part, no starter button interestingly when it ought to.

first thing I did, obviously before testing say the engine, was a bit of shopping. a sprocket cover and top half of the chainguard were acquired from the bay of E, and stowed nicely on the self.

I then decided I wanted to check for a spark and general electrical life, so I acquired a fully charged brand new battery (bit of a pain as the bike, i believe, remains in her 6v form) wired it in exactly as the previous one was and... nothing. No life on the cluster, and no spark. curse word. I am pretty useless with electrics, not totally, but pretty.

one thing I did note is that the points and condenser look fairly new, which is both good and interesting.



however, the wiring around the battery positive terminal looks odd, and i'm fairly convinced that a fuse ought to be creeping about. |I am wondering if a previous 'attempt' to start her has been made...



so for the moment she is under a thermal blanket waiting for me to make a plan, and look for a wiring diagram, and or a sister bike to copy (i like to learn that way).

I also intend to rob expertise. I have a couple of friends who have vintage lambretta's and the odd vespa, so I am counting on them having knowledge of electrical issues! however if anybody is in the local of bristol who wants to pop round and lend a perusal, I wont say no! I have tea.

in the meanwhile, i'm still on the hunt for the missing bits. and a replacement fuel tank cap. As I decided to go to a jumble and look for one, however did i remember to take the measurements/a picture of the tank... nope. Though I did get a nice new interesting spannery clampy thing....

Might be worth joining VJMC on facebook and get a Haynes manual for it.

Tracked down said owner (it was a fair guess, there's only one guy in the factory mad enough to be riding a classic bike to work in this weather), PM with an email address incoming.

He said David Silver has nearly everything for them.

one thing that has certainly come from my first look at the wiring, well two things, number one i certainly learn better when I have seen a template and can work from it, and second, somebody else didn't have a template or a clue and has done some odd fiddling in there! things are looking up for the Benly! However, forgot to get a set of non-bent bars.... oops

So the wife went to bed a bit earlier than me, so rather than watch the TV I did a bit more late night benly tinkering!

First thing was the airbox. The one on the bike had a split pipe to the carb, and was plenty rusty. Thought weirdly housed a brand new air filter. Removed it, again no seized bolts thankfully so it came of easily enough. Here's the new and old together



Both air filters were ok tbh but the first was better so moved that across, fitted with satisfying ease and precision.



Then it was a matter of swapping the rubber holder for the indicator relay over as well (thank goodness for wd40) then popping the cover on and that nice little airbox is ready to go on the bike.

Seeing as my torch was still working I decided to investigate the front mudguard. It's had a weird loosness to it and has some really bad old riveted patch on the top. So with with the addition of a ratchet extender bar (I love the simplicity of this bike to work on it's brilliant and very accommodating, so far) had the front mudguard off.



As soon as I had it off something ominous became apparent



And well, here is the before of the patch in all its glory



And here is the after



That might explain the loosness! Perhaps it be time for a new one me thinks. Front mudguard added to the shopping list.

Me likey what the postwoman bring today!





An original front mudguard! Found on the bay of E, technically it's from a cd125 but as they're the same bar the engine it was a safe bet. It has a fair amount of patina, which is in keeping with the rest of the bike.

I decided to fit it immediately, and I'm pretty pleased with it. Such a reassuringly easy job to fit (I suppose the name Benly does derive from the Japanese word for convenience) and it's nice to see a part being fitted on rather than taken off! Will be out with the brush and autosol soon.



On a separate note I decided to remove the rear support from the old mudguard, just in case it was useful. So I now have the bracket and and support separate, so could be useful if I want to make a custom mudguard or something (not for this bike!) however in this process the old mudguard snapped in two! So iI think that really might have seen its' last mile. Still, approaching the weekend where all being well the electrical transplant shall take place! Fingers crossed that that works!